Thorium research can make India's dreams come true: This should be national priority

India is poor Alladin and Successful commercial Thorium based reactor is the magic lamp India is searching for.

If India can fast track this to 2020, it would take India's growth to 10%++ .

India doesn't lag in developing thorium-fuelled nuclear-reactor: MR Srinivasan, former AEC chairman
IANS|
Updated: May 29, 2016, 02.52 PM IST
NEW DELHI: There is a misconception that the Indian atomic energy programme has been slow in developing breeder reactors that will be fuelled by the country's vast thorium deposits, a foremost nuclear expert says.

"India has not been slow in developing next generation nuclear reactors that would use thorium as a fuel. Such notions are misconceived. No one in the world is ahead of us in this direction," former Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman and ex-secretary Department of Ato ..

"Using thorium is a time-consuming process. By itself it is not a fuel, it is a potential fuel placed in the reactor and some other fissile material is needed to convert it into Uranium 233," he pointed out.

Fast forwarding to thoriumWhat is the single greatest factor that prevents the large-scale deployment of >thorium-fuelled reactors in India? Most people would assume that it is a limitation of technology, still just out of grasp. After all, the construction of the advanced heavy-water reactor (AHWR) — a 300 MWe, indigenously designed, thorium-fuelled, commercial technology demonstrator — has been put off several times since it was first announced in 2004. However, scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre have successfully tested all relevant thorium-related technologies in the laboratory, achieving even industrial scale capability in some of them. In fact, if pressed, India could probably begin full-scale deployment of thorium reactors in ten years. The single greatest hurdle, to answer the original question, is the critical shortage of fissile material.

The earliest projections place major thorium reactor construction in the late 2040s, some past 2070. India cannot wait that long.